According to Comscore Networks, American online consumer sales set a record
of $17 billion for the first quarter of 2002, among which $6.9 billion
for the travel sector alone, which represents 40.58% of all U.S. sales.

More interesting
is the fact that these figures indicate an increase of 87% for travel
sites versus the same period in 2001.

When one
knows the impact the September attacks had on this sector of activity,
this achievement appears all the more striking.

According to Comscore vice president Dan Hess, the arrival of sites such
as Orbitz.com in the travel sector, linked with ever increasing promotional
offers and other discount products, helped the etourism sector develop
in such a positive way.

This is how
average daily sales made by online travel agents kept on setting a new
record all through 2002 first quarter:

- $74.9 million daily travel sales in January 2002

- $76.8 million daily travel sales in February 2002

- $80.8 million daily travel sales in March 2002

This increase
being so huge, Comscore specifies that, despite the period concerned,
these sales are already much higher than the ones witnessed in the summer
of 2001.

Even though
we do not have the whole forecast for the year 2002 yet, it already seems
that it should confirm the eTourism increasing power and that this year
is going to be a good one for all the actors who have managed to convert
their lookers into buyers.

51.2
million surfers, a 12% increase between Februaryand March 2002 on travel
sites

According
to Nielsen Netratings, the number of unique visitors on eTravel web sites
surged to 51.4 million in March 2002, as compared to 45.9 million in February
2002.

These figures
are confirmed by the sales registered by Comscore Networks (see previous
article) that indicate a similar growth of the sector.

If we take
all surf sessions into account, Netrating noticed that 43% of all Internet
users visited an online travel site at least once in March 2002, which
confirms the predominance of the sector in all the surf sessions.

We can also
notice that online travel agencies are growing much faster than airline
web sites.

This is
how, among the top ten sites that registered a higher number of visits
in March 2002, we have 7 online travel agencies (Orbitz included, which
is a bit particular) for 3 airline companies only.

According
to Nielsen Netratings, Expedia arrived first in March 2002, with as many
as 11.6 million unique visitors.

It also
proves interesting to notice that the travel channel of the two biggest
portals managed to remain among the top ten eTravel web sites. Please
also note that Yahoo! travel is ahead of AOL Travel, when the latter was
considered as the top one for a long time. Similarly, it seems that the
"Orbitz bet" is a real success as we can see that this American
airline federative web site does much better than individual web sites,
even though it has only been online for less than a year, which is all
the more striking as we know that it is a brand new company that still
needs to assert itself in order to be at the height of its power.

This achievement
for Orbitz, whose marketing expenses are rather significant, is a very
strong indicator for Opodo, its European counterpart.

According
to Nielsen Netratings, the average American Internet user spent, at the
rate of 36 sessions per month, an average of 19 hours and 50 minutes online
in March 2002, which represents an hour more than in February (18 hours
and 44 minutes).

Business
travel: even though Internet users still believethat lower fares are to
be found online, traditional travelagents are still cheaper

According
to a study conducted by Topaz International from May to December 2001,
business travelers would waste time trying to find better fares online.

Indeed,
according to Topaz, corporate travel agencies would be offering fares
that average $170 per itinerary less than fares offered on the Internet
sites, including sites such as travelocity.com, expedia.com, cheaptickets.com
or even orbitz.com.

The results
of the study conducted by Topaz indicate that fares offered online, compared
to fares that can be obtained by companies using corporate travel agencies,
would be 27% higher.

It goes
without saying that not all companies can obtain such preferential fares
through their traditional travel agency.

Topaz International
emphasizes the fact that, in order to reach that goal, a managed travel
program is required. It implies that a policy of travel program management
must be wholly integrated between the corporate travel agent and said
company.

To reinforce
this study, Topaz International indicated that it found lower fares on
the Internet less than 7% of the time.

By converse
implication, what this means is that 93% of the time spent by business
travellers on the Internet to find lower fares... only results in wasting
both their time and their money!

Best online
sales performance
The sites with the highest online sales performance are JetBlue, Southwest
Airlines, Airtran and Alaska Air. According to Jupiter, these sites are
the ones that proved best at attracting their customers to the online
channel up to now.